


Jean-Luc and the Technically-Navy Dream Coat (No Really It's Made Of Thought Matter)

by Bagheera



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Civil War, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagheera/pseuds/Bagheera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q comes to visit Picard shortly after the war in the Continuum has begun. [Set after "Star Trek: Generations" and "VOY: Death Wish", and before "The Q and the Grey"]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jean-Luc and the Technically-Navy Dream Coat (No Really It's Made Of Thought Matter)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xparrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/gifts).



> Beta-read by X-los. She is to thank for the relative lack of German run-on sentences, and for the fact that the coat in question is no longer an Union officer's coat. She also suggested the title, which is both appropriate and misleading, and too awesome not to use it.

When Starfleet offered him command of the new Enterprise-E, the prospect of having a year to do with as he wished was both daunting and welcome. Will and Deanna both hinted that maybe a little peace and quiet would do him good, but as soon as he dipped a foot into the holiday feeling of having nothing urgent to do, Picard discovered that he dreaded it more than anything. He had vague plans – an overdue trip to La Barre, conferences and symposiums that he now had the luxury to attend, visits with old friends. But after the constant pressure of captaining a ship, these weren’t quite enough to occupy his mind. So when he got invitation to teach a final year course at the Academy on dealing with unusual first contact situations, he accepted immediately. 

The room full of bright young faces made him more nervous than a skirmish in the Neutral Zone, but that was quite all right. This was a pleasant sort of tension, the kind that kept you young and on your toes.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘usual’ first contact situation,” he told his students on the first day. “First contact is always about the unexpected. Some beings that you will encounter out there will be so strange that even years after the initial contact has been made, you will have to readjust your way of thinking every time they cross your path. That is what makes the unknown so frightening – it shocks us out of our comfortable familiarity with the things that seem normal to us. It forces us to look in the mirror and reconsider ourselves. And the truth is, there’s really very little advice I can give you on how to handle this sort of situation, except this: always remember your own limitations.”

But teachers, he thought wryly when he returned to his apartment, were never quite as good as their word: there were still moments when it wasn’t at all easy to adjust his perceptions – such as when he found the sleeping form of Q on his living room couch. 

Affecting sleep, presumably. Even if the Q needed any form of rest, Picard very much doubted that Q would choose to do so in a place where he might be caught unaware. But although he remained frozen by the door in surprise for quite some time, waiting for Q to jump up and begin his usual song and dance, nothing happened. Q still didn’t stir. 

Instinctively he reached for his communicator, only to realize that he wasn’t wearing one because he was dressed as a civilian. Picard frowned. For a moment, Q’s presence had let him forget that he wasn’t currently in command of starship. Now that he remembered it, he sensed that this wasn’t just a small alteration in their usual dynamic. It made a world of difference. Q had only ever come to him on the Enterprise, where he was captain of the Federation flagship, and that position always lent an official air to their encounters.

Although… that wasn’t completely true. Some of Q’s visits in the past could hardly be termed official. He certainly hadn’t been on Continuum business during that silly Robin Hood affair. And conversely, Picard hadn’t met him as captain of the Enterprise when he’d died on the operating table, his artificial heart fused by disruptor fire. That particular test had been personal in the extreme. 

Still, he’d never expected to find Q here, and in this fashion. He’d have been no less alarmed to find a delegation of Ferengi sitting around the kitchen table. Picard took a step inside to let the doors close, and cautiously advanced. 

Just before he seriously considered clearing his throat to gain Q’s attention, Q opened his eyes. There was no cloudiness in his gaze, nothing that gave credit to his pretense of sleep, only the usual dark intensity.

“Well, well,” Q said softly, “you’re home early, Picard. I expected you’d be out all night, savoring the San Francisco nightlife, joining your students for a glass of wine, having a good time…”

“Hardly,” Picard snorted. “If you really expected me to be gone for another few hours, you wouldn’t be here. You’re too impatient to wait when there’s nothing here to entertain you.”

“Indeed,” Q agreed. “This place is so tidy and presentable, I’m surprised it didn’t spontaneously fall apart when I arrived. It’s the last place anyone, including me, would look for me.”

In Picard’s opinion, the apartment was quite pleasant – situated in one of the few historical buildings that had been preserved for centuries, it had high ceilings, genuine wooden floors and handmade furniture. Perhaps it was a little impersonal, a little too much like a hotel room, but then, it was only for a year. Of course, it wasn’t the Enterprise.

“I’m not on duty,” he pointed out severely. “I’m living here as a civilian, so if this is another test of yours, I must protest. I cannot in good conscience act as any kind of representative for humanity.”

The corners of Q’s eyes wrinkled as he gave him a mocking smile. “Picard, Picard – do you really think you get to refuse once we’ve made up our minds? After all the time you’ve known the Continuum?”

Q sat up slowly, completely unlike the theatrical gestures he usually employed. He was wearing an outfit that was vaguely familiar – some kind of military uniform, historical by the looks of it, with the dark blue coat unbuttoned, showing a disheveled white shirt beneath. All the signs of rank had been torn off the coat, leaving it ragged, and it was streaked with dust and something darker – apparently the origin of the faint odor of gunpowder that lay in the room. No matter how whimsical, Picard reminded himself, there was always a message in the way Q chose to appear, some symbolic value, and this time…

“Ah,” Picard said, realization dawning on him at last. “This _isn’t_ a test. The last place anyone would look for you… you’re hiding from someone. And in my experience, there’s only one reason you would have to.”

Q replied with a dismissive hand wave, aborted with a slight flinch, as though he had over-extended a pulled muscle, or hurt a sore spot in his shoulder. It was as good as an admission. 

Picard drew in an exasperated sigh. “You’re in trouble with the Continuum once more.”

He remembered his own incredulity the first time Q had come to Enterprise to request asylum. The only reason he didn’t think of that whole incident as an elaborate charade was that he couldn’t think of a good reason why Q would humiliate himself in such a way. Perhaps to make them believe that he trusted them with his life. It was easier to trust someone when you believed your trust was reciprocated. But although Q played elaborate games all the time, Picard felt that such underhanded manipulation was out of character for a being as arrogant as Q. For a trickster, Q was surprisingly honest. 

“It makes sense,” Will had pointed out at the time. “Out of all the powers in the Alpha quadrant, how many do you think wouldn’t have tried to exploit the situation? We’re big enough to give him some protection, and nice enough not to use him for our own gain.”

It had turned out, of course, that they weren’t big enough to protect Q even from the Calamarain. Much less his own people …

“If you’re running from the Continuum,” Picard began, only to be cut off by Q.

“I’m not running. It’s a tactical retreat. I’m regrouping.”

“It usually takes more than one person to regroup.” Picard pointed out. Q sent him a glower, but for once, he didn’t have a clever retort. He wasn’t, Picard suspected, much of a strategist. There was no need for him to ever develop tactical thinking, given that ninety-nine percent of all species were vastly inferior to him. He’d been able to act on whims and inspirations all his life. Which was probably why it hadn’t yet occurred to Q that the hiding place he’d picked was far from perfect. If the Continuum as a whole was any smarter than him, they’d go looking for Q in all his favorite haunts, and eventually, they’d come here.

Even Q had to see that, no matter how rashly he acted. He had all the cosmos at his disposal. He could have picked some non-descript star cluster, some random uninhabited region of space, or some kindly species that was far more powerful than humanity. Instead he came here. For what? 

There was one temptingly obvious answer, but it supposed too much. Q wasn’t human. To suppose that he had human feelings, that he had them _for_ a human, was doing both of them a disservice. 

The mere fact that Q hadn’t moved from the couch, and looked slightly wan in the face just from sitting up, showed that he was weakened. Maybe even hurt, if Q could be hurt. And if he could, then he wasn’t in full possession of his powers. The prospect of once again dealing with that particular problem brought on the beginnings of a headache. What was the proper protocol for a situation like this? As long as Picard was on leave, Q couldn’t formally request asylum from him. In fact, Picard wasn’t authorized to grant it. Of course he could refer Q to Starfleet headquarters, which were only a few blocks down the street. In any case, he wasn’t officially responsible for any formerly omnipotent entities who picked Earth as their refuge. 

That was the answer he’d give his students, accompanied by a warning. When dealing with an entity like Q, you always did well to stay completely professional. As long as you had duties to fulfill, and regulations to respect, it was easier to avoid any temptations they might offer you. And while you were on duty, you always had other officers to watch your every step, and warn you in case you were doing something to endanger your ship – or yourself. The moment you let the relationship become personal, the moment you turned it into a private matter, that safety net was gone, and all you had to guide you was common sense and your own personal ethics. 

That was what he’d tell his students. But this wasn’t a hypothetical encounter with your average god-like alien. This was Q on his couch close to midnight. Whether Picard wanted it or not, it was already personal.

His mind made up, Picard cleared his throat. If Q wanted something from him, he was going to have to name it. “I take it this is your way of requesting my assistance.”

Q glanced up at him with a sudden livid anger in his dark eyes. “I’m not some helpless exile begging at your doorstep, Picard. Not this time. A being of my power doesn’t need alms from mere mortals.”

“So you do still possess your powers.” That was, curiously enough, something of a relief. There’d been nothing more annoying than Q as a fumbling mortal. 

Q’s tone dropped to a simmering threat. “Do you care for a demonstration? Trust me, Picard, you’ve had only the slightest taste of terror, compared to what I’m capable of.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Picard chose an armchair and sat down, crossing his legs. He was ready to wait until Q got over his infernal pride. 

When he’d walked home from the Academy, he had planned to cook dinner, read for a bit, and then go to bed, but Q’s presence was electrifying enough to chase away all thoughts of food or sleep. It was the kind of healthy fear that made you feel wholly and truly alive. It stripped away the years, making him feel like a man in his prime, every fiber of his body thrumming with everything he needed to survive. In a way, it reminded him of the first time he’d met Vash, except that excitement had been of a sweeter, more playful nature, whereas with Q, there was always the sense that he stood on a precipice, and before him lay something that could devour him if he made one false step – or reveal to him secrets of undreamt profundity. 

But for now, the source of said profundity sat on his couch and picked at a loose thread on his uniform like a pouting child. He didn’t look as though he was going to divulge any cosmic secrets in the near future. 

Picard began another awkward attempt at opening a proper conversation. Communication, he would tell his students the next time he saw them. Communication is what turns a conflict into a dialogue. “Given our last encounter, I think I still owe you a debt of gratitude. I assume that’s why you’re here.”

Q responded with a slight roll of his eyes, still preoccupied with his uniform. “Please. Your help would be about as much use to me as a well-meaning puppy licking his master’s feet to save him from a heart attack.”

“Very well,” Picard said, and got up from his seat to do something he’d never thought he’d do: turn his back on Q. His master’s feet indeed. Well, at least that cleared up the matter of Q’s feelings towards him. Perhaps Data would be pleased to find out that he was right all along: Q thought of him as a pet. 

It even explained why Q was here. Picard had never been a cat or dog person, but even the silent, senseless company of his fish had sometimes been comforting. Perhaps I ought to be flattered, he thought as he left the room. At least a pet is more real than a toy or a character in a holo novel. 

But then why the tests? Why the challenges? Why argue with him all the time? You could teach a pet tricks, but you’d be a fool to try to make it grow beyond its natural limits. As Picard entered the apartment’s small kitchen, he saw himself reflected in the windowpane, and had to chuckle. Had he really grown so vain? Had Q finally found a way to tempt him without even trying? 

Remember your own limitations. It was time to take his own advice. He made tea the old-fashioned way, boiling water on the old museum piece of a gas stove even though here was a replicator in the kitchen. It took more than ten minutes, and he was surprised they passed without incident. Q sat where he’d left him, only now he was paying attention, clearly disgruntled at being ignored so long. He also looked a little greyer in the face, a little more exhausted. 

Picard had brought two cups. He was fairly sure that Q didn’t need any kind of sustenance, but it would have seemed impolite to do otherwise. “Tea?”

Q’s lips curled in derision, but he didn’t outright refuse, so Picard poured two cups. One he left on the coffee table in front of Q, who watched the steam rise with a thoughtful frown. 

“Sharing a drink as a gesture of peace. Interesting, Jean-Luc. Very archaic. But then, you were raised by rustics, weren’t you?”

“My family was somewhat traditional,” Picard admitted. It wasn’t something he was ashamed of, but it he hadn’t fully made his peace with his family’s way of life either. But as he grew older, and his childhood more distant, at least he could admit they’d been very right about many things. The manners his mother had insisted upon had certainly served him well under many circumstances. What would she think if saw him like this? She’d only wanted to raise a decent man, and instead she’d raised a diplomat who took tea with demigods. Their father hadn’t concerned himself with spiritual matters, but their mother was a different case. She didn’t adhere to any of the old religions, and he’d never asked her, but Picard had a feeling that she might have been an agnostic. 

Q wasn’t ready to let the matter go. “You learned to toil the fields in the sweat of your brow and all that?” he prodded. 

“Yes.” Picard blew his tea. Well, he’d tied up some vines as a boy, and his father would probably turn in his grave if he heard him claiming that he learned anything at all about the family business. But Q probably didn’t care about such technicalities. He was only looking for something to goad him with. “I don’t see what difference it makes to you, given that you’re always telling me how backwards humanity is as a species. For your point of view, it’s undoubtedly a very small step from agriculture to spaceships.”

Q turned around his cup without picking it up, as if it was some fascinating alien artifact of unknown purpose. “You were taught how to prepare your own food, and make your own clothes?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. My grandmother taught me how to use needle and thread, but I never got much farther than sewing on a lost button.”

Q looked up suddenly, and his frown bloomed into a grin. “Perfect. I knew I could count on you, mon Capitaine.” He patted one of the pockets of his coat, and pulled out a little bundle – a shiny button or two, an epaulette, some tangled thread and a needle. Then he pulled off his coat and tossed it onto the table, narrowly avoiding the teapot. 

“Well? What are you waiting for? Show us your stitches, Picard.”

The request was so bizarre that for a moment, he couldn’t do anything but blink. Then he gingerly picked up the coat. The fabric felt real, heavy and coarse, still warm from wear, and not at all like an illusion. It had always been his assumption that the body and the costumes Q chose to wear when he appeared to them were only short-lived creations. But the coat seemed to be an actual wool coat, complete with frayed edges and what looked suspiciously like blood stains.

“Is this one of your jokes?” Picard asked, although he had a strange feeling that it wasn’t. 

“Can you or can’t you mend this?” Q retorted, and no, he wasn’t joking at all.

Picard experienced sudden, plunging helplessness. Once again Q had managed to mystify him. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.

“I don’t see what’s so distressing about that,” Q said. “You understand so little, why, your whole existence is a leap of faith!”

“A leap of faith,” Picard repeated slowly, weighing the words on his tongue. Faith was something that had to be earned. Q didn’t seem to grasp that, but then, Q’s trust could apparently be earned by defying him at every step. To him, a challenge was an invitation. And what had he ever done but challenge them? What sounded like a throw-away insult was nothing less than a confession. Q was asking him to take a leap of faith. Not presuming, but asking. Picard picked up the needle and the thread. “All right, Q. Just this once.”

At first, he feared he had promised too much. He’d been a boy when his grand-maman had sat him down and said: there may be new-fangled tools for this, but nothing shows love and care like your own hands. He’d pricked his fingers then (and hated his grandmother for making him do something that, at the time, had seemed completely pointless), and he pricked them now. But the pain and the little drop of blood seemed hardly worth a curse compared to the things he’d endured since he’d been a boy of ten. After a few fumbling stitches, he remembered what she’d taught him, and managed to sew on the first button to his satisfaction. It gave him time to examine the design, and now he looked at it more closely, it triggered his memory. 

“This is French,” he hazarded. “Eighteenth century?”

“Honestly,” Q tutted. “And here I thought you studied archeology. Try the next century.”

Napoleonic? No, that wasn’t quite right, especially as Q was wearing the coat over a set of trousers and a shirt that didn’t look as though they conformed to any kind of military regulation. It was a uniform, but of a makeshift kind – the uniform of a revolutionary. “The garde nationale?” 

“Warmer,” Q sing-songed, and now he was watching, hawk-like, for him to figure it out. 

French history wasn’t his forte, his family had been too proud of their heritage for it to ever hold much interest for him, but it was beginning to come back to him. “Nineteenth century…” He ran a thumb over the red collar, the frayed cuffs. “The Paris commune of 1871?” 

“Dix points!” Q crowed. 

Suddenly, the faint outline of a notion coalesced into meaning. Q was hiding from the Continuum, but they hadn’t taken his powers away yet. He was wearing the clothes of _communard_ , appropriating the style of a disorganized revolution that had lasted only one year before it was tread into the dust. A short summer of anarchy with a bloody underbelly and bloodier end. And by the looks of it, this costume was more than an affectation. It had seen some wear. 

“Q,” he said, drawing a shocked breath. “Does this mean – “

“Yes?” Q asked sharply, in his courtroom voice. “What _does_ it mean, Picard? That I am next of kin to chaos? That I’m bringing about the destruction of the greatest race that ever lived? That I’ve brought death to eternity? Or that I’ve listened a little too well to your lessons about progress and freedom and _ethics_?” Q laughed darkly. “But I haven’t been too good a student, I suppose, or I would be out there dying for my cause.”

Picard’s mind balked at the implications. “You’ve started a revolution within the Continuum,” he tried to clarify. “An actual revolution, where people – where beings of your kind are dying. And you’ve come here because you’re having second thoughts?”

“Maybe I’ve come here so you could talk me out of it,” Q muttered.

Picard looked down at the uniform in his hands, at the needle and thread. The stains and burns looked like the wear and tear of a battlefield, but the buttons and epaulettes had been torn off on purpose. The action of a deserter. Q wasn’t running from the enemy, he was running from his own side. Suddenly, his reason for being here was a whole lot clearer.

“No,” he said softly. “If you’d wanted me to talk you out of it, you wouldn’t have asked me to mend your uniform.”

Q leaned back to sprawl on the couch. “Maybe I just wanted to indulge your domestic side.”

Picard shook his head slightly in amazement. He couldn’t help but be a little pleased, a little flattered. A pet might well provide comfort, but you didn’t come to it for advice and reassurance. Q asking him to take a leap of faith was not a test, it was a question. 

But how could he answer it? He knew next to nothing about the Continuum, and very little about Q. He looked down at the coat, trying to order his thoughts. The epaulette promised to be the biggest challenge to his modest skills as a tailor. Perhaps it was better to admit that he was out of his league. 

“Your actions in the past may have been erratic and destructive,” Picard mused, “but I always believed that even at your worst, you had a basic sense of right and wrong. There are… certain lines you can be trusted not to cross. No matter how hypocritical your tests may have been, you always gave us a fair chance.”

Picard didn’t check to see whether Q was listening. The silence was confirmation enough. Instead, he plunged the needle into the wool once more. It went with surprising ease, almost on its own, and the stitches came out neat and precise. The more he thought about it, the more he sensed that he was ready to take that leap of faith, to give Q his benediction, and yet… and yet. 

“By coming here,” he went on as the needle went round and round, “I believe you’ve already given yourself the answer. I couldn’t presume to judge your cause, and frankly, that’s not what you came for. All I can tell you is that now that you’ve started this revolution, you can’t run from it. It’s become your responsibility.”

He put in the finishing stitches and pulled off the thread. It almost looked as good as new. Q sat up and leaned across the table to look at the uniform with something like surprise. “That worked better than I thought,” he grinned. He reached for it, but Picard held on to the coat for a moment longer. 

“I encountered a race once,” he told Q, “that could only speak through elaborate metaphors and analogies. To communicate with them at all, we had to learn their stories, because it was the only frame of reference they could understand. It’s the same with you, isn’t it? This coat isn’t really a coat.”

Q smirked, and took the coat. “ _Ceci n’est pas un manteau_ \- not bad for a mortal, not bad.” The twinge in his shoulder seemed to be gone, and he pulled on the coat with ease. Then he jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. “There’s hope for you yet!”

Picard knew the chance of getting a straight answer out of Q was infinitesimally small, but that didn’t keep him from trying once more. “And the war – that’s also a metaphor?” 

Q cocked his head. “Are you concerned for my well-being, Jean-Luc? How sweet of you. Rest assured – the metaphor is every bit as lethal as the real thing. Oh wait. That’s not very reassuring at all, isn’t it?” 

Picard gave him a pointed look. “It’s also not much of an answer.”

For a moment, Q seemed on the verge of saying more, but it was only a tease. “It wouldn’t do to tell you everything at once,” he said impishly, snatching up the needle and the thread. “Otherwise, what would you have to look forward to?”

With a last ironic salute, Q vanished. He left no sign that he had ever been there. Even the tea pot was gone, and now that he thought about it, Picard wasn’t sure that there was a tea pot like that in this kitchen. It looked more like the old earthen pot his mother used to own, which was surely gathering dust in some La Barre cabinet. 

And yet his finger still stung where he’d pricked it with the needle, and his heart still beat so fast that there was no hope of sleep tonight. He could have used that energy to write yet another difficult and scarcely believable report on Q. But he found that he was more content sitting in the dark and turning the evening over and over in his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> The Paris commune of 1871 was one of the last aftershocks of the French Revolution of 1789, or one of the first Marxist/Anarchist experiments, depending on how you look at it. They probably didn't have real uniforms, but some of the Communards were from the Garde Nationale - whose uniform, funnily enough, looks a lot like that of an American Union officer. At this point, Q is talking to a Frenchman, and his war is only a localized rebellion and not a full-blown Civil war, so he picks a different costume than he did with Janeway. X-los was the one who pointed out that the Civil War analogy didn't make much sense in Picard's case, and suggested a French rebellion instead.
> 
> "Ceci n'est pas..." refers to the surrealist painting "The Treachery of Images" by Rene Magritte.


End file.
